Adam Beaver (Bok Center) discusses diversity statements
On October 28, Adam Beaver of the Bok Center delivered a lecture entitled "Demystifying Diversity Statements" as a part of CCB's ongoing EDIB seminar series. This talk provided the CCB community with crucial information on the composition and use of such statements.
An abstract for the lecture follows: Though diversity statements have become a topic of sometimes heated discussion inside and outside of the academy, guidance about how to compose an e ective statement—indeed, even about what they are and why they can be valuable to institutions and candidates’ own professional development—remains scarce. You may think that diversity statements require you to locate diversity within your own social identities, or to adopt a consensus attitude with regard to what it means to foster inclusion and belonging. You can, of course, note how your identities and life experiences motivate your commitment to supporting diversity in higher education. However, beyond your motivation, universities and colleges want to know what you have accomplished in your career to this point and how you will contribute to their goal of making their institutions more inclusive and equitable. The most compelling diversity statements o er your de nitions of equity, diversity, inclusion, and belonging (EDIB) and demonstrate how your research, teaching, and service actualize your EDIB goals. Join this workshop for a series of hands-on activities that will help you begin to draft a diversity statement that is authentic to your own values and goals.
As the Director of Pedagogy for the Bok Center, Adam Beaver provides leadership and strategic direction for the Bok Center's faculty programming, while working closely with faculty and graduate students in the humanities, social sciences, and General Education. Trained as a Renaissance historian, Adam is especially attuned to what we can learn from the deep history of universities, including the different kinds of intellectual practices and communities which have inhabited them. Rather than see recent trends in higher education, from the digital revolution to the shift towards active learning techniques, as moments of rupture which render traditional modes of teaching obsolete, Adam is interested in thinking with teachers about the best way to blend different kinds of techniques and exercises into a bespoke style that works for each individual instructor and course.
This seminar is the second in the CCB EDIB Seminar Series, which aims to create a platform for meaningful discussions around important EDIB topics such as breast cancer awareness, the gender gap in academia, racial diversity, and writing EDIB statements. Through these sessions, participants will be encouraged to explore how aspects of personal identity brought into the scientific workplace enrich scientific discovery and the culture of higher education.
The series is supported by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) EDIB Graduate Student Fellowship program, with fellow Jack Thomas-Colwell (Nocera Group) playing a key role in its organization. The program is overseen by Principal Research Scientist & Lecturer Dilek Dogutan and Assistant Director of Graduate Studies Josh Cox. The department plans to gather feedback from attendees and hopes to continue and expand the series in the future.
Photos are available below and a recording can be accessed via Panopto (HarvardKey Required).
